All these posts...

It seems as though each era has a post- ... there's modernism and post-modernism... there's Victorian and post-Victorian eras. In Jameson's "Postmodernism" he attempts to describe the difference between the two, and the need for the "post". He states, "It may indeed be conceded that all of the features of postmodernism I am about to enumerate can be detected, full blown, in this or that preceding modernism" (269). Jameson calls this time period "Old Modernism," which is an interesting view point.
When the eras change it is usually because of a rebellion of the current era. For example modernism came into being because the Victorian way was not working for their state of mind or culture anymore. So then postmodernism must spring up because modernism is outdated. What Jameson is arguing against is that just because postmodernism aims to be the exat opposite of modernism (much like modernists' goals were to be opposite of Victorian) it does not mean that premodernism (or Old Modernism) and postmodernism are the same thing. He says that we have to take into consideration the time period, "The first point to be made about the conception of periodization in dominance, therefore, is that even if all the constitutive features of postmodernism were identical and continuous with those of an older modernism... the two phenomena would still remain utterly distinct in their meaning and social function, owing to the very different positioning of postmodernism in the economic system of late capital, and beyond that, to the transformation of the very sphere of culture in contemporary society" (270). What I find is that a different cultural era comes into place due to an rebellion of the current society. In literature the two are always linked, so you cannot ignore the economical and societal changes.